


When it Happened (If it Happened)

by hippoiam



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, get your shit together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 11:12:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10638660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippoiam/pseuds/hippoiam
Summary: Youngho smiles, beer bottle gripped loosely in one hand and a cigarette halfway to his mouth, “I’ve learned to love you quietly.”Jaehyun doesn’t quite know what to say.





	

‘Captain Lime- coming to your Lemon-aid!’ is what the caption on the poster reads. 

Jaehyun, who’d woken up at ass-o’clock in the morning just to be the first to wish his skyscraper sized, asshole of a best friend happy birthday, nearly regurgitates the mouthful of coffee he’d just swallowed. 

“What is this fuckery?” he mutters, eyeing the cartoon of a bulbous, green lime shaped obscenely like a testicle wearing a cape and mask, treading on what seemed to be a small, flailing Cheeto with a health amount of doubt. From beside him, Chittaphon, who looked about one traffic light away from murdering the next person who breathes on him, lets out a pre-coffee snarl and shoves his hands into his pockets violently.

Jaehyun wordlessly passes him his own cup.

“Thanks,” they walk in companionable silence as he undergoes his daily transformation from murderous axeman into a respectable citizen who will not be charged for multiple cases of homicide. Jaehyun tightens his scarf around his neck against the winter wind that adamantly refuses to leave even after January had passed. From his peripherals, he spots a blurred figure making its way towards them.

“Good day my sweethearts,” a cheerful, booming voice sounds from behind them,” how are you two gorgeous lads this fine morning?” 

Chittaphon groans, “die.”

The responding gasp is less offended than teasing, and Yuta drapes his arms around the two of them, falling into step easily. “I would be offended, Ten, if not for the fact that I see coffee in that cup so you have not yet reached your final form. How do you survive, Jaehyun?”

At the call of his name, he snaps his attention from the sight of the bald man across the street attempting to pet a rubbish bin and smiles in what he hopes is a charming way, although he has been told that it comes off more as a tad constipated. 

“I can’t kill him,” Chittaphon raises a perfect eyebrow at him, “Youngho will catapult me off a bridge. That’ll ruin my face.” Then, as an afterthought, “my face is the money-maker.” 

“You speak nothing but the truth,” Yuta claps him on the back, pointedly ignoring Jaehyun’s meek splutter of ‘no he won’t’ before whipping out his phone and holding it up triumphantly.

“Did you know,” he announces, “that I texted our dear beanpole this morning at five in the morning to wish him a happy birth date, birthday, but- but but but! Was promptly informed that I was the second to do so which leads me to think…” Both of them turn towards Jaehyun, Yuta gleefully, Chittaphon with a hint of exasperation. 

“I was working on a paper so I was up anyways-” His feeble attempt to defend himself is promptly trampled on by the cackling of his two best friends; he hopes furtively that one of them will fall into a light coma soon, preferably before they ruin his existence by informing a fourth party of his constantly evolving, frankly kind of out of hand love for Seo Youngho. 

“Incredible,” the face Yuta pulls makes Jaehyun shrivel up a little inside, “denying it even when hearts are spewing out of your eyes and rainbows shooting out of your ass. Give up, sugartits, everybody with half a brain cell knows you two are going to get together and makes some gross-ass, good looking babies. Or at least attempt to, repeatedly.” 

The eyebrow wiggling that followed was just unnecessary. 

“I’m in the friend-zone,” his voice comes out a little miserable, but at least nobody screams over him mid-sentence; which is a miracle in itself- even if said sentence was five words long. 

Chittaphon snorts, looking exponentially more awake (and alive) than he had thirty seconds ago, “this shit again.”

Jaehyun opens his mouth to give an indignant retort, then proceeds to walk into a telephone pole. 

 

“Hey thanks for- why do you have a bruise on your face?” As soon as he is within talking distance, Youngho’s eyes zero in on the blossoming purple around his eyes, reaching out with long fingers to cup his cheek for a better look.

“Uh,” is Jaehyun’s intelligent response- because that’s what he was, intelligent. 

“Translation: face planted into a pole this morning because he was too busy daydreaming about his-” Taeyong clamps a hand over Yuta’s mouth, either to shut him up or, the more likely option, just as an excuse to get to touch his face. 

In a split second, Youngho’s face falls from concern overlaying barely concealed elation to a sour sort of fury. “Right,” he deadpans, lips forming a tight line, “thanks for texting me this morning.”

“Thanks for being born,” his voice takes on a slightly dreamy, dazed quality as he stares into the birthday boy’s warm eyes. God, it wasn’t fair to cram so much good DNA into one person, and his hair, it looked so soft, so nice, he could just reach up and- 

Chittapon makes a gagging noise in the background.

“Gross, dudes, just make out already, how much more obvious do we have to make it?” He complains, loudly, with furious nods of assent from everyone around him. Jaehyun is still lost somewhere between lamenting the perfection of Youngho’s nose and the way his ears are so nice shaped. Youngho, on the other hand, turns a bright, blazing red that compliments his leather jacket so nicely-

“You sons of bitches,” Yuta remarks incredulously. 

 

Jaehyun met Youngho the same day that he falls in love with chicken.

He’s five years old, Youngho is older and the weirdest, shortest kid on the playground. Neither of them were particularly accustomed to making to make the first step in making new friends, Jaehyun because he’d grown up Chittaphon and Yuta, watched them pee in the bath and puke in either others hair- Youngho because he had no friends. 

So, when the pale boy wearing the nice shirt with light up sneakers and crayons tucked behind his hears comes up to him shyly next to the swings and holds out a hand, Youngho promptly bursts into tears.

The chicken made its first appearance outside of the school in the patch of bushes bordering the soccer field. Jaehyun’s parents, who were hardworking but forgetful, dedicated by tired, were late picking him up every day. So, he stood outside the gates after school, trying to hit bits of rock on the road with other bits of rock. It was invigorating. 

After making that funny looking kid cry however, he hadn’t felt up to inventing new and exciting ways of keeping his mind occupied, and instead found a shaded spot to kneel and pity himself in. Unfortunately, this spot was already occupied, by a huge, obnoxious chicken who screeches at him angrily and beats its fat little wings for him to get out of the way.

“Oh no, Martha!” Came the horrified cry of the very kid who’d been bawling next to the swing set just hour priors, “stop bullying my chicken!”

The chicken, or rather Martha (a rather unfortunate name as the chicken was, in fact, a male) lifts its body off the floor and flaps its way straight into Youngho’s face. Jaehyun gapes for a moment, before bursting out into laughter and falling in love.  
Martha dies a little over a year later, they hold a little funeral for him in the Seo’s backyard, and Jaehyun sniffles all the way through it. Afterwards, the older boy hugs him close and they sit on the deck for a while, the milk bottle and chubs, strange and stranger. 

Of course, one and a half decades later, Youngho would grow to be a good head taller than the rest of his classmates with the most devastatingly attractive everything and his best friend, who people called ‘not the sharpest tool in the shed’, would begin subtly salivating every time they had sleepovers in the summer and slept without shirts on. 

Jaehyun’s gay realisation came to him in an epiphany consisting of seventeen-year-old Youngho’s abs and fries jutting out of his nostrils. Oh god, I want to lick those he thinks with horror as he looks at his best friend’s barely there abdominals. Then, oh god, I’m in love with him, as his eyes drifted to the two long fries dangling out of his nose holes. 

Later, when he told Yuta and Chittaphon of this crisis, both sighed and ruffled his hair.

“We know,” Yuta said, albeit not unsympathetically, “you’ve been talking about kissing Tony An since you were six, Jae, it’s not incredibly hard to figure out you’re into dicks.”

Into one dick in particular, is what he doesn’t say, but nobody takes too long to figure that one out, least of all hawk eyed Chittaphon, who could smell out emotions like sharks could smell blood. Unhelpful as they are, Jaehyun knows with 64% certainty that they have his best interest in heart, he knows, and he repeats this to himself like a mantra to refrain from punching them in the face, because Yuta was currently holding up a pair of jeans that didn’t look like it could fit two sticks into it, and Chittaphon a shirt so thin his nipples could probably slice through the fabric if it got too cold.

“Guys,” he clears his throat, grabbing one of his ten flannels and a pair of shoes that looked like they would be fashionable in his grandma’s clubbing years proudly, “I’ve got it sorted.”

When it came to clothes, Jaehyun was… comfortable. He had five pairs of the exact same jeans, the one he bought two sizes too big because he thought skinny jeans were supposed to be baggy and owned a strange collection of hats that he treasured and never wore. Youngho, on the other hand, looked stunning in everything he wore. Even if he came tonight in a plastic sack, socks with sandals and marshmallows taped over his nipples Jaehyun would still be irrevocably in love with him. 

Chittaphon groaned, but let him be. After all, it wasn’t as though Youngho hadn’t seen Jaehyun wearing worse, and the point wasn’t to make the kid look so swoon worthy that Youngho would immediately want to engage in some saucy birthday sex with him, but to pull the heads of these two idiots out of these asses for long enough to let them know that they were, in fact, in love. 

“I regret ever sharing a sandbox with you,” with a cluck of the tongue, Yuta whirls into the closet to resettle his wounded fashion heart. 

“Come on then, buddy boys, we’ve got ten minutes before we have to leave,” Jaehyun cheers, oblivious to the contemplative look Chittaphon was shooting his nest of a hair, “we can’t be late to-ack!” 

He went down like a flagpole in the wind.

Seven minutes later, his hair had enough gel in it to power a small country, and there’s another bump forming at the side of his lips from where he’d accidentally jabbed his face onto the bedframe in an attempt to evade the hairspray flying his way, and a bruise on his neck from where Chittaphon had pinched it to get him to stop squirming. With zero consideration for his wellbeing, the two had then proceeded to drag him outside to Yuta’s shitty Toyota and bundled him in as though afraid he would make a break for it at any second.

“Alright, off we go, matches to make, birthdays to celebrate, we’re talking about you too Ten, don’t think we haven’t seen you making eyes at Mark’s ass.”

“He’s still a high schooler. That’s illegal!” Chittaphon splutters.

“Well, you can afford to wait a year or two.” 

It seems as though it had taken no time at all to get from the dorms to Johnny’s apartment, although that may be mainly attributed to the amount of driving laws Yuta broke on the way. Jaehyun steps out with shaky legs, gripping onto the car door for stability.

“You’re absolutely nuts,” Chittaphon informs him, wiping the sweat from his brow.

The art of ignoring his sane friends has been perfected by the Japanese boy, however, and he simply locks the doors, throws them a dazzling smile and marches up to the doors. “Thanks babes, now let the romance commence.”

 

The romance, it seems, had first commenced back when he was twelve, when fourteen-year-old Youngho had gotten his first girlfriend.

She’d been very pretty, all big imploring eyes that made you want to help her and long smooth hair. Youngho had been utterly infatuated with the way she held her pencils. They’d drifted apart a little because of it, Youngho had been too old and too mature to hang out with little pork bun Jaehyun, he had to do homework, and be with his girlfriend, and make new friends who weren’t years younger than him, who weren’t Jaehyun. 

Jaehyun had been angry, and hurt, but mostly angry. So, when Youngho shows up at his door three weeks later, looking worse for wear with obviously red rimmed eyes, he’d cut him off mid-sentence by slamming the door in his face. 

Whoever said he was too much of a doormat to ever do such a thing was fucking wrong, he’d been a vindictive twelve-year-old, and Youngho an asshole of a pre-teen, so he proceeded to ignore him for the following week, and it took two pizzas, an ice-cream and a bag of sour candy to win back his friendship. 

After that, neither ever made the mistake of ignoring each other again. 

 

In the present, Jaehyun gapes.

Is this the real life? 

Yuta and Chittaphon have already made their way inside, loudly greeting Taeyong who stutters his way through his own hellos at the sight of Yuta’s turtleneck. This exchange is completely missed by Jaehyun, however, as he is left standing stupidly at the door, taking in the vision of utter perfection that is-

“Hey,” Youngho smiles, leaning on the doorframe casually like he didn’t just destroy three quarters of Jaehyun’s brain cells and dignity and god, was he actually drooling right now? On his favourite flannel, too. Nobody could blame him though, because there he was, his best friend since the great chicken incident of 02’, in a black dress shirt looking like he just stepped out of a sex god convention. It’s been so long since they’d seen in each other in anything but ratty hoodies and sweatpants, broke college students that they were, and this was… Alright, Youngho was talking now, pulling him in by the wrist with a glint in his eye. Jaehyun almost drops the present he’s holding. 

“Happy birthday, hyung,” he manages, although he’s not sure it’s even audible over the bass of the music playing. They pass Chittaphon, who’s devouring fruit kebabs violently. Jaehyun sends him a look but receives nothing but a wink in return. 

“Dude, you have to try the cake Taeyong made, it’s so bad it might actually kill a man,” he chuckles, weaving his way through the people drinking beers and sodas, fingers still wrapped around Jaehyun like it was no big deal; and it wasn’t, they’d held hands before, shared the same straw, worn the same clothes, compared dick sizes once in their high school days. But this, this felt different, this had intent, and Jaehyun was lost as to what exactly that intent was. 

When Taeyong sees him, he barks out a sharp, almost nervous laugh, “nice, Jae.” 

“What?” He looks down at himself, nothing out of the ordinary, so why was Taeyong and Sicheng, who’d just appeared beside him, staring at him like he’d told them he was going to fly to Mars and colonise it by having sex with cacti? 

Mark pops his ramen head up over their shoulders, “hyung, you’ve got a giant hickey on your neck.”

From next to him, Youngho stiffens into a slab of stone, turning his head towards Jaehyun slowly. “You’ve got a hickey on your neck?” He all but snaps, voice testy and more than a little aggressive. 

“No?” He rubs the spot of the alleged hickey, “I don’t remember-” wait, he does remember, Chittaphon’s fingers coming in to assault him as he struggled away from the hair gel, he was going to kill that fruit kebab fanatic, “no, guys, I can explain. It’s not a hickey, Ten-hyung pinched me.”

Youngho looks less than convinced.

“Hyung,” Jaehyun turns to him, unsure as to why he looked so furious at the prospect of a potential hickey on him but desperate to reassure him all the same, “no big deal. It’s your birthday, can’t we talk about something else?”

At his plea, Youngho softens a little, reaching out to throw an arm around him in reconciliation. 

From the kitchen, an excited scream of ‘this cake is fucking awesome’ sounds, and everyone turns to Taeyong in utter horror.

“Hyung! You actually took the cake out to feed to everyone?” Mark gapes incredulously, “are you not afraid of being sued?”

“No, you punk,” Taeyong retorts, crossing his arms, “I went and bought a new one.” A collective sigh of relief rippled through the group. 

“Birthday boy!” 

From his left Yuta smashes into the taller with drunk enthusiasm, waving a hand at the rest of them. How he was already drunk barely twenty minutes into the night was beyond Jaehyun (although he did have his suspicions that the water he was drinking before this was not actually water), but there he was, tipsy turvy, squishing Youngho’s cheeks fondly before jamming his present into his hands. 

Big crowds weren’t really Youngho’s things, neither was socialising. His days as a chubby, short, buck toothed primary schooler hadn’t really ever left him, most of the people here were friends of friends as opposed to his own, and although he wasn’t too keen on joining, he did like seeing them have fun. There was a big game of beer pong going on in the living room, and Haechan, despite being sixteen, was definitely smashing the rest of them, he could see Doyoung wrestling anyone who tried to hand the kid alcohol and replacing those with tins of coke instead. In the corner, a smaller but no less intense competition of darts was going on, and thus far nobody’s darts had made it onto the board.

It was only well into the night, at around three am when the last of the people had gone home that Youngho finally relaxed, locking the door and turning back to the couch which Ten, Taeyong and Mark were sprawled out across.

Ten had remained unflinchingly sober for the entire night, but was out like a light as soon as midnight struck, Taeyong and Yuta had danced to Anaconda three times before the former too had been too tired to twerk anymore (Yuta had been disappointed, because nobody should ever be too tired for twerking). Mark and Haechan were firmly denied any alcohol, and dropped from their sugar high somewhere between the dance competition (which Taeil had lost spectacularly because he’d been on his third bottle of beer) and the freshman vomiting on the carpet. 

“Well,” Youngho raised an eyebrow at the mysterious stains littering his floor (and curtains, and couch, and, distressingly, bed).

From inside, Jaehyun, who’d already rummaged out a couple of large black trash bags and was picking up the streamers and bottles left on the floor, smiled at him disarmingly, “happy birthday, hyung.”

Youngho laughed lightly, coming up behind him so that when he straightened they’d be touching, a move so bold that it would have surprised him if he were sober, “you already said that, and it’s not actually my birthday anymore.”

Jaehyun hums a little in sleepy assent, feeling his back meet flat surface as he stood up. 

He hadn’t had any alcohol, but the sleep fogging his mind had more or less the same effect, so when hands came to his hips to turn him around, he didn’t resist, and when the same hands slid up to cup his face tenderly, he simply closed his eyes and waited. 

“Should I open your present?” Youngho murmurs, each word a warm gust of air on Jaehyun’s face. His eyelashes flutter open, and he doesn’t know how well he masks his disappointment. 

“Yeah,” he breathes, embarrassingly high pitched, handing over the package that he’d been grasping onto the entire night. There’s a damp handprint on it from where his palms had been sweating. 

They sit down on the balcony, cross legged and facing the city, Youngho takes the utmost care in peeling open the tape, nose scrunched up in concentration. When he unveils it, the photo album shaped like a large chicken, his eyes flicker to Jaehyun with a twisted expression, as though he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to say, or ask. 

Jaehyun reaches out for him, “are you okay? Do you not like it?” 

For a moment, there’s silence, then Youngho drags in a deep shaky breath and mutters, “I need a fucking cigarette.”

 

The thing is, Youngho has spent more time being in love with Jaehyun than he has not. 

Since they were children, by the swings, as Jaehyun scolded older boys heads taller than him about social etiquette, when all the other kids were falling from roofs thinking they could fly, Youngho had been falling in love.

It felt about the same, really.

Except falling from the roof has a definite end, and in the split second before you reach the ground you realise that having a cape does not equate to the negation of all the physical laws of the universe. Falling in love, on the other hand, defies all logic. It made you want to laugh, and it made you want to cry.

So, when he looks at the chicken on the photo album, feels the weight of years of inside jokes, vacations and broken bones in his hands, he looks at the best friend that he has loved for all his life, and realises that, this is it, this is it for me, there’s never going to be anybody else, I’m just going to have to spend the next century rotting in my apartment if he doesn’t feel the same way, I’m going to have to die a virgin. 

So, he murmurs, “I kind of, really love you,” quiet and withdrawn, holding the album closer to his as though Jaehyun was going to hurl it off the balcony because of the confession.

Except, the younger boy just sits there, eyes wide and disbelieving, mouth parted sweetly. 

“Y-you what?” he begins, almost choking, “you never said anything.”

Youngho smiles, beer bottle gripped loosely in one hand and a cigarette halfway to his mouth, “I’ve learned to love you quietly.”

Jaehyun doesn’t quite know what to say. 

“You motherfucker,” he finally manages, ignoring the shocked look Youngho sends him in favour of grabbing him by the perfect head and planting one right on his perfect lips and feeling them curve into the perfect smile right underneath his. 

They pull apart when they remember oxygen, too, is a necessity.

Youngho looks a little dazed, swaying like a gust of wind could topple him, “right.” 

From inside, a roar of approval sounds, and a voice which sounded suspiciously like Yuta’s calls, “finally, you sons of bitches. Fucking finally.” 

 

The next morning, Jaehyun wakes up with something on his neck.

“Wha-?” He mumbles blearily, shifting a little in the strong arms wrapped around him.

“Hold still,” Youngho rasps in his ear, lips brushing the skin at the nape of his neck softly.  
When they all finally get out of bed to conjugate in the kitchen, by which time it was already well past time for breakfast and almost too late for lunch, Mark squeaks in disgust and backs away.

“Hyung!” He screws up his face.

“What?” Jaehyun’s cheeks are brighter than a baboon’s ass. 

Yuta smiles tranquilly, shoving a piece of toast into his mouth, “Jaehyun, we’re proud of you, my son.”

It was only later when he looks in the mirror that he realised a) somewhere in the night someone had drawn a huge dick on his forehead, most likely Ten, though he’ll never admit it and b) there was now a ring of angry looking love bites dotted around his neck and jaw, that, was, undoubtedly, courtesy of Youngho.

He grins.

Fucking finally indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading this hodgepodge. I just had too many Johnjae feels not to write something about it.
> 
> Please do point out any mistakes- editing is not my strong point (eating chicken nuggets, though, absolutely is).


End file.
